First:Please start up your version of Visual Studio and create a new C# console application.

C# program that uses local variables

using System;

class Program
{
    static void Main()
    {
	// A.
	// An integer is local.
	int cat = 1;

	// B.
	// A string is local.
	string dog = "cute";

	// C.
	// An array is local.
	bool[] b = new bool[]
	{
	    true,
	    false,
	    true,
	    true
	};
    }
}

Then:Click on it in the line you want to debug. The red circle on the left is where you need to click to set the debugging breakpoint.

And:The red block over the code line is where the debugger will open. We must first execute the program.

And:The icons on your setup will look a little different depending on your preferences and OS.

Next:Open the Locals window. You can open the Locals pane in more than one way. Go to Debug -> Windows -> Locals.

Note:Many of these options are advanced and not needed for most debugging purposes.

Properties in debugger: Visual Studio

Name:
The name of your variable.

Value:
The data stored in your variable.

Type:
The data type of your variable, such as int, string, bool[].

Text Visualizer:
Allows you to see the plain text value in the variable.

XML Visualizer:
For XML files. You can visualize XML data with this function.

HTML Visualizer:
Use to view the data in Internet Explorer as HTML.

Expression:
This is on the Visualizer windows. Shows the variable name.

Note:Using these options takes practice. It is hard to learn them at the same time you are learning an entire language.

Step options: Visual Studio

Step Into, F11:
Use Step Into to go inside your method and stop immediately inside it.

Step Over:
This also moves to the next step in your code.
It doesn't, however, break inside any methods.

Step Out:
Ignores the rest of the current method and goes to the calling method.

Note:The screenshot shows the local arrays. Each element in the array is referenced by an index.

Tip:Look inside an array by clicking on the + box. You can browse all elements.

Array elements

- b              - name of the array
    [0] true     - first value in array
    [1] false    - second value in array
    [2] true     - third
    [3] true     - fourth

And:With break points, we can write messages to the console, or keep counts of how many times they are hit.

Method 1:In your ASP.NET website, open Web.config and change the compilation tag's debug attribute to false.

Method 2:In Windows applications, go to Project -> MyApplication Properties... Then change the Configure dropdown to Release.

Method 3:The third way is to change the toolbar dropdown when it is available.

And:This depends on the program. More complex, algorithmic programs tend to become still slower.

Benchmark:For benchmarking, please run outside of the debugger. For the best benchmarks, do not involve Visual Studio at all.

Then:When the breakpoint is hit, right click on its value in the Locals window. And change its value to 3.

Result:The value "true" will be printed twice. We edited the value to be 2 and then 3.

Program for Edit Value demonstration: C#

using System;

class Program
{
    static void Main()
    {
	int value = 2;
	if (value == 2)
	{
	    Console.WriteLine(true);
	}
	if (value == 3)
	{
	    Console.WriteLine(true);
	}
    }
}

Output

true
true

Note:This doesn't involve the VS debugging environment. So they can be used when testing release builds and for performance testing.

Tip:The benefit to these methods over the Console methods is that they are removed in Release builds of your application.